Sean Trane
As the decade is drawing near, Santana was moving more out of his pure jazz-rock era, probably realizing the style was starting to exhaust its possibilities. The album does veer a slight bit towards the funky (and even a bit disco) with a typoical Spencer Davis touch with Greg Walker’s Winwood-styled vocals.
While the album starts out surprisingly on a Traffic cover of Dealer (good but not as good as the original) and ending on a cool Spanish outro, Move On is now a typical Santana track that mixes Winwood-souled vocals with that typicvally aerial latin-fusion the group had developped over the last four years. The surprisingly funky (dare I say almost disco-ish) One Chain is hardly insufferable though, but the more calm but still funky Stormy is rather bland.
Side 2 starts out with another Winwood classic followed by a harder Open Invitation reminding a bit the early-days Steve Perry Journey, but nothing infuriating either. The Lady/Holiday couple is bringing us back towards Amigos, while the funky Facts Of love is again flirting with a funky Winwood influence.. The closing percussive Wham! is almost a return to the first three albums albeit slightly modernized, and might just be my fave on the album.
By then end of the album, one can only be a tad irritated at the too-numerous Winwood references from Spencer Davis to Traffic, but this is clearly due to Dennis Lambert’s production also as he collaborated to three songs also, earning a co-credit for each. Not one of Santana’s most original album, not one of his worst either. Only really flawed by the heavily-slanted singing, this remains a good Santana album, just not an essential one.
